hadriel | [2] text

Some things worth noting:

1. You can apparently be brought back to your home world and it's as if you've never left it at all. You can be there for weeks, months at a time and then one day, show back up back here and it's only been a day or so here that you've missed. I don't know if anyone else has had this experience before.

It is unpleasant.

2. I went into the tunnels to see if they were anything like the Maze I know of back in my world. There's two interesting things worth noting. The rock inside of the tunnel is different than out in the main area. Not sure if anyone's noticed this yet. It's strange.

But there's something stranger that we found in the tunnels. Deep inside, a ways in, there was a burnt computer chip. Totally useless but it was stranger than the formations almost.

That's about it. I figured it's more valuable to pool our information together rather than hog it to myself. Not going to find any answers that way. In my opinion, if there's tunnels and tunnels made out of different rock then that's got to mean there must be some sort of way out of here. Or at least another place to be found. I didn't explore the entirety of the tunnels and I don't really want to but it is possible.

If you do, run fast, take weapons, and try to remember everything. Back in the Maze, we'd send people in and they'd come back at the end of the day and record the route they took on a piece of paper.

Maybe that wouldn't be a bad place to start. It helped us figure the Maze in the end. Maybe the tunnels will be the same.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Two years. Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry. That's really terrible.

[ Two years ago was when Gansey first came to Henrietta. The thought of losing everything before that - England, Wales, every country he'd trawled through, every scrap of earth he'd searched. Malory. All of it, gone in an instant. He'd feel entirely lost.

No wonder this boy doesn't mind dealing with the loss of a few months. Gansey immediately stops complaining about it. Compared to what Newt's dealing with, he has no right at all.There's magic in my world, yes. Not everyone can see it, and in fact not everyone is aware of it. I spent a long time looking for it, but the wonders are there. Once you know where to look, you'll start to see them. Even if you can only observe, and not participate. My home is built upon what's called a ley line. Essentially, it's a concentration of energy, and people with magic in them tend to be strengthened there.

But that's getting off the point. That's a rather large collection of monsters designed to drive us back, don't you think? There's two ways of looking at it, I suppose. One presumes that someone is deliberately keeping the monsters there, to stop us from looking in the tunnels. The other is that the tunnels really are a dead end, and so there's nowhere else for the monsters to go. It could even be a combination of both, I suppose.

Don't apologize. It's fine. I've had two years to realize that the past isn't all there is to life. Present and future is a lot more important.

(Besides, wishing for the impossible was the most guaranteed way to be completely miserable. There's a lot of things he has to be miserable about but there's some things he refuses. Getting the memory loss conversation out of the way was important though. After all, most people here knew things that were more "common".

He had no clue about a lot of things and it was just easier to explain it upfront than later when someone was giving him a weird look for not knowing what a movie was or something of the like.

Newt would likely argue that Gansey was plenty entitled. Wasn't every entitled to their pain? Newt wasn't that kind of person to say no.)

I don't know a lot about magic. Didn't really believe it was real for a while until my roommate helped me understand it a little better. It's still strange to me but not as impossible. Do you "participate" in magic? Is that like- doing strange things? Healing people or having future sight or turning into animals?

(He actually has already met two of the latter. He's assuming this is a common thing whoops. Kid has no idea how diverse magic is.)

It's hard to say. Monsters in my world were just meant to make us squirm, put us in situations so the Creators could watch and see what we would do. Intent is a lot murkier than people here seem to want to admit. Truth is we don't know what the 'gods' actually want. It could be...many things. Two ways is pretty limited. I'd say there's much more than that.

There's also the option that the monsters are an accident. If they come from other worlds just as we do then maybe there's no rhyme or reason to them coming through anymore than there seems to be for us to come through. Maybe they're intentional. Maybe they represent different things we're supposed to do. Maybe something in the tunnels attract them and that's why they cluster there.

Who knows.

(Newt hesitates a moment, just frowning down at his screen. Eventually he makes up his mind.)

If you want, I could help you learn to fight a little. Anyone can throw a punch but that won't do shit against a troll. I'm pretty decent with things like spears. Spears are nice. You can throw them or fight and if you're good- you can defend with them too.

I don’t participate. Or I can’t, more accurately. I’ve spent a very long time looking for it.

[ Looking for any sign of it, even. And now, of course, he’s seen more magic than he’d imagined at all, and not all of it is so wonderful as he’d always thought. Much of it has been darker than anything he’s ever wanted. He could tell Newt so many stories.

He starts with the easiest of them. ]

I’ve met people who could see the future. I wouldn’t quite exactly call that magic, in fairness – there’s more than one argument that classifies psychic powers as more of a science than anything else, and I think I’d probably agree with them.

Healing is something I’m aware of, let’s say. But I’d prefer to talk about that when we’re actually talking.

[ Fighting is another story entirely. Gansey has never thought of himself as a violent person. Quite the opposite, in fact. The thought makes him desperately uncomfortable, but -

But, he does think they need to explore the caves. ]

Maybe? My friend tried to teach me. If we’re talking about monsters, though, it might be different. I can’t promise I’d be good.

[ He can basically promise he’d be terrible, actually. ]

But I think you’re right. I think we don’t know enough about what’s out there and if we’re going to find a way home, we need to know more. We won’t find out by staying here.